


Insomnia

by Ashley_McNabb



Category: The Professionals (TV 1977)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:02:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25449532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashley_McNabb/pseuds/Ashley_McNabb
Relationships: William Bodie/Ray Doyle
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Insomnia

He can’t sleep as usual, at least not properly.

He tosses and turns scraping at his body with worn-ragged nails. He itches relentlessly. Gunshot will do that to a person. Thousands of tiny fragments of shrapnel moving and squirming beneath his red, inflamed skin.

He’s too hot again. He used to love the heat but doesn’t cope now he’s put on the weight. He once looked like a dancer. A dancer who had the hips of a hooker and the pecs of a God.

He doesn’t look like that anymore. He doesn’t _act_ like that anymore. He acts like a man who got shot at one day, but lived on regardless.

The drink doesn’t help him for all his excuses. He tells himself he deserves it though he knows that’s not true. Just ‘a quick can of beer’ and ‘a sly glass of wine’ are rarely drunk later than three in the afternoon. It’s a pattern that takes him far into the night.

He can’t get to sleep until he’s half-cut. He often doesn’t drop off, even then. He’s not used to the rolls of flab, doesn’t know what to with them. He also doesn’t like his racing pulse or shortened breath, but ignores them stoically.

He ignores me too. I come to him, try and hold him tight, but he shakes me off at every turn. He doesn’t believe in the past nor believes in the might be’s. For all Ray Doyle is concerned, my spirit was killed in that firefight along with my body.

So I watch him and _will_ watch him, trying to sleep and I’ll be there waiting, for when he wakes up.


End file.
